Egoh's Ecosystem Services Lab

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Lab Members

Benis N. Egoh

Associate Professor
Email: begoh@uci.edu
Phone:+1 (949) 824-0985

Dr Benis Egoh is an Associate Professor at the Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine (UCI). She holds a Master’s in Conservation Biology from the University of Cape Town and a PhD in Zoology from Stellenbosch University.  Before joining UCI, she worked for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)in South Africa as a principal Scientist and for the European Commission as a scientific officer. Benis’ research is focused on generating outputs on biodiversity and ecosystem services that are relevant for policy implementation. These include understanding the benefits of restoration and making explicit monetary value, working with smallholder farmers in Cameroon to make the oil palm sector sustainable, and using new tools (e.g. Big data and Machine Learning ) in mapping and modeling ecosystem services. She is the coordinating lead author (CLA) for IPBES’ Business and Biodiversity Assessment. She is a member of the IUCN Task Force for Oils and Ecosystem Services Partnership (ESP, https://www.es-partnership.org/) executive committee

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Mody Ayompe Lacour

Assciate Specialist Scientist/Visiting Scientist at IITA(Cameroon)
mlaccour@uci.edu

Dr Lacour Mody Ayompe is a Specialist Scientist in the Department of Earth Systems Science, University of California Irvine, USA. He is a renewable energy and energy efficiency expert with over 15 years of sustainability research in the water-food-energy nexus including experience in industry and teaching, energy auditing, distributed energy resources, renewable energy technologies, energy efficiency systems and energy policy. His current research interest is on socio-economic impacts of agricultural commodity trade and energy access using renewable energy systems on human livelihoods. He has co-authored several peer-reviewed journal papers and the PV Insider India Report in 2013 on Cost, Performance and Project Development.

 

 

Ph.D. Students

 

Julia C. Lenhardt (jclenhar@uci.edu)

Julia is a Ph.D. Candidate in UCI’s Department of Earth System Science, working with Prof. Benis Egoh. Julia earned a B.Sc. in Earth System Science from McGill University and an M.Sc. in GIS and Remote Sensing from Clark University. She has 10 years of experience with remote sensing and GIS and her research interests include climate change and its impacts on ecosystem services, the intersection of agriculture and natural lands, and the use of remote sensing and GIS in mapping ecosystem services.
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Epie Wesner Njume (PhD student; enjume@uci.edu )
Epie is a graduate student with Egoh  Lab in the Department of Earth System Science at the University of California, Irvine. Epie earned a BSc in Geography from the University of Buea (Cameroon) and an MSc in Geomatics from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Epie joined the Egoh Lab to work on the impact of land use change on ecosystem services in the Dja region of Cameroon.

 

 

 

Past members

Charity Nyelele
Postdoctoral fellow (Now Assistant Professor at UVA)

cnyelele@uci.edu

PhD Environmental Science | State University of New York

Charity is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Earth System Science at UCI working with Benis Egoh. Charity, a Fulbright alumna, earned her Ph.D. in Environmental Science from the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF). Her research interests are the intersections of human well-being and the environment, environmental justice, and the links between ecosystem services and biodiversity. For her Ph.D., she worked with Professor Charles Kroll, an environmental modeler, to quantify ecosystem services and benefits from urban trees in New York, and assess the equity of these ecosystem services, and developed a multi-objective decision support framework for urban planners. At UCI, she works on a Center for Ecosystem Climate Solutions project to develop and communicate strategies to better manage California’s natural lands for climate change.

 

Kyle Thomas Manley (Now Postdoctoral Associate, University of Colorado Boulder)

Kyle.Manley@colorado.edu

I am a climate/ecology researcher broadly interested in better understanding climate change impacts and the subsequent human implications. During my Ph.D., I will focus on assessing how climate change impacts a diverse range of ecosystem services in various regions and at a multitude of spatial and temporal scales. Previously, I attended the University of Colorado Boulder studying environmental science with minors in climate/atmospheric science and ecology. I have worked at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the National Ecological Observatory Network, and at my undergraduate institution studying how a drainage basin in Australia will potentially be impacted under future regional climate change scenarios (Accepted in Frontiers in Earth Science, Sep 2020). 

Ada Na’Bila Acobta (Air Pollution Specialists | California Air Resources Board (CARB) )

Ada is a graduate student researcher working with Benis Egoh within the Department of Earth System Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. Ada received an MSc in Natural Resources and Environmental Management from the University of Buea, Cameroon in 2016. She went on to volunteer with youth-led non-profit organizations in Cameroon as an Environment Development Specialist and as a Community Development Personnel, developing new ways of tackling environmental problems and working with local communities on adapting to the effects of Climate Change alongside conservation and development projects. Her research interest is in human impacts on Ecosystem Services, anthropogenic Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and Climate Change adaptation. She is currently looking at the impacts of commodity trade on ecosystem services focusing on the palm oil trade in Cameroon.

Publication

  1. Acobta, A.N., Ayompe, L.M. and Egoh, B.N., 2023. Impacts of palm oil trade on ecosystem services: Cameroon as a case study. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 7, p.1289431.
  2. Acobta, A.N.B., Ayompe, L.M., Wandum, L.M., Tambasi, E.E., Muyuka, D.S. and Egoh, B.N., 2023. Greenhouse gas emissions along the value chain in palm oil producing systems: A case study of Cameroon. Cleaner and Circular Bioeconomy, 6, p.100057.
  3. Martin Ngwabie, Ada N. Acobta, Veronica E. Manga, Andrew C. VanderZaag. 2018. Emission factors of greenhouse gases from layer and broiler barns in Cameroon: Atmospheric Environment, 176  54 – 59.